Fantastic story of a black hat SEO link builder who became a millionaire working 10 hours a week before Google's algorithm changes destroyed his business and pushed him to embrace content marketing and inbound strategies.
“Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.”
Nice bit of reporting, right? You'd be forgiven for thinking it was the lede of a beat writer's game recap in the Los Angeles Times.
As robots start to write content in a way that's hard to distinguish from human-created content, one might wonder as Dennis Shiao: will Content Marketing also be done by robots?
He asked me to contribute to this post along with other Content Marketers such as Barry Feldman and I'm really glad he did as I have a strong opinion on that topic. As I presented at data week, I've had several experiences as an engineer and an entrepreneur trying to assist human judgement with automation.
My take away from failures and successes?
Both automation and human judgement are needed. A concept we've even defined a term for: humanrithm.
While I'm a big believer of leveraging technology and automation (again, I'm an engineer by training), I've also found that more often than not, human judgement adds a lot of value and bypassing it leads to mistakes or incomprehensions.
With regards to content marketing specifically, the biggest issue is trust. Content marketing is about trust. But we humans don't trust computers yet. We trust other humans who educate, entertain or inspire us.
So while it would inefficient to not leverage automation to source content (as the Scoop.it suggestion engine does) or to program it over multiple channels (as Scoop.it Content Director does), applying human judgement in content creation, curation and editing remains key.
A great, concrete and useful getting started guide by Rebekah Radice who definitely knows what she's talking about.
One thing that comes clearly out of this is that business blogging is a process. To be successful, you need to establish the required workflow that will bring the discipline and consistency necessary to get results.
Now, don't let this overwhelm you: software and tools can help.
She gives a number of examples and you can also check out our own approach to that problem as this is why we created Scoop.it Content Director as an integrated and easy-to-use solution.
Fantastic story of a black hat SEO link builder who became a millionaire working 10 hours a week before Google's algorithm changes destroyed his business and pushed him to embrace content marketing and inbound strategies.
Let's get real for a moment. Content marketing, lead generation, lead nurturing—if any of these words are in your job title, chances are you either love SEO, hate SEO, or hate SEO with a passion.
Via Guillaume Decugis
The new SEO has changed from keywords to topics. By focusing on intents and answering questions your audience have, you can build a framework for your content that will make you rank. And the best news for those who hate SEO?You will do SEO without doing SEO.
Not sure all of these rules are on the same level but I couldn't agree more with the fact you have to create content that answers your prospects and customers' questions. And as you do, you'll realize you have to real them down by funnel stages as a first-time visitor doesn't have the same question as a hot prospect who already had a talk with your sales team.
So my number 1 rule would actually be to list the 5 top questions that are the most common at the 3 main funnel stages: top, middle and bottom (this article uses many more stages but I like to simplify).
This is should make a list of 15 questions that you can now write or curate content for under a variety of formats:
Technologies that facilitate content marketing will continue to be the most important marketing technology for US B2B marketers, according to one survey. But will other currently valued marketing technologies hold relevance, or are new categories set to grow in importance?
Content is more and more the bottleneck of marketing. Now that marketing automation is significantly deployed, marketers are struggling with content generation: content for email marketing, content for lead generation, content for lead nurturing, content for traffic generation, for SEO, etc...
On my end, I see a lot of marketers who feel like they've done the right things and still don't see results: they built landing pages, they have workflows to nurture leads automatically, etc... They built it but they're not coming.
To overcome this and make an inbound strategy run, marketers need content. So it's not surprising that in the same way they expected to have software to help them manage landing pages, emails, etc... they're not expecting content marketing software to help them scale their content marketing.
The data has spoken and it's clear: the debate on content quality vs content quantity is a wrong one. The truth is you need both.
Of course, you shouldn't publish bad content. But don't think a solitary epic ebook or white paper will be enough to raise above the noise.
So what are the consequences of that study by HubSpot?
1. You need to plan for both consistency and quality. If you're working on your 2016 budget, make sure you target both.
2. It's very unlikely you'll have enough resources to create everything with the right level of quality: leverage content curation to supplement your own content and third-party contribution to guest blog for you.
3. In these days of content explosion, doing everything manually is like bringing a knife to a gun fight: invest in content markting software to meet your plan's goals.
Myths and misconceptions about search engine optimization just don't seem to go away. Columnist Jayson DeMers offers an explanation for why this is so and what SEO professionals can do about it.
SEO has been completely disrupted over the past 5 years: from a technically-driven, complex and obscure field, it's been changing to focus on publishing great content. A lot of SEOs failed to follow that trend but the good ones like Jayson DeMers give an articulated view of the new SEO which makes total sense - as he does in articles such as this one.
This is a very detailed study on how the various criteria correlates with rankings.
Now, the big caveat is that correlation is not causation. For instance, the #1 correlation observed between the number of referring domains and the position in Google can be the result of a virtuous and amplifying cycle: content with backlinks from several domains get well ranked which means that other domains tend to refer to it as it's easily found in researching for a new piece of content.
Still, this post is a very interesting read to get a better of sense of how SEO works.
Different publications, writers, and audiences do not all respond to the same type of content.
Want to get in the New York Times? You probably shouldn’t send them an infographic. Approach them with unique, topical data, however, and you might have a way in. Looking to be featured on Buzzfeed? Lengthy lists are the way to go. LinkedIn? You need to write long-form articles.
The fact is that if you want to diversify your traffic – that is, if you want to get your brand featured in a variety of publications and want to attract a varied audience to your site — you need to mix up your content strategy.
Different people have different needs when it comes to consume content. For isntance, I don't drive to work so I mostly read text. But a lot of people who drive to work love podcasts to make their commute useful.
Now the key point in this post by Sujan Patel: to optimize your reach, you need to use multiple formats. Not just when you have multiple audiences to reach but also because your same targeted audience is comprised of diverse people receptive to different formats.
On our end, we've been focusing a lot on text historically but we've been pleasantly surprised by how well SlideShare did for us and more recently webinars.
The next question for the lean content marketer convinced of using multiple formats is: how can you create these multiple pieces under different formats with the minimum effort?
This makes me want to do a follow-up on how to use repurposing for this as I believe it's a great way to think about solving that problem: creating under one format and repurposing to another is a great way to increase the shelf life of your content and diversify your traffic.
Different people have different needs when it comes to consume content. For isntance, I don't drive to work so I mostly read text. But a lot of people who drive to work love podcasts to make their commute useful.
Now the key point in this post by Sujan Patel: to optimize your reach, you need to use multiple formats. Not just when you have multiple audiences to reach but also because your same targeted audience is comprised of diverse people receptive to different formats.
On our end, we've been focusing a lot on text historically but we've been pleasantly surprised by how well SlideShare did for us and more recently webinars.
The next question for the lean content marketer convinced of using multiple formats is: how can you create these multiple pieces under different formats with the minimum effort?
This makes me want to do a follow-up on how to use repurposing for this as I believe it's a great way to think about solving that problem: creating under one format and repurposing to another is a great way to increase the shelf life of your content and diversify your traffic.
Remarkable presentation by Rand Fishkin who makes a crystal clear point on what republishing content to other platofrms can bring.
Rand says you can increase your traffic, reach and SEO by 3x. On our end we can attest this works though there are many reasons we'll come back on to not systematically do it / overdo it. So if you're interested in what results this can bring, read our post on the results of our own experiment.
Remarkable presentation by Rand Fishkin who makes a crystal clear point on what republishing content to other platofrms can bring.
Rand says you can increase your traffic, reach and SEO by 3x. On our end we can attest this works though there are many reasons we'll come back on to not systematically do it / overdo it. So if you're interested in what results this can bring, read our post on the results of our own experiment.
Over the past 10 weeks, the Scoop.it team surveyed over 300 marketers to better understand this question. We also conducted dozens of longer interviews with SMB marketers to add a qualitative component to our research. And finally, we asked top content marketing experts including Joe Pulizzi, Mark Schaefer, Barry Feldman, Ian Cleary, Andy Crestodina, Mike Allton, Lee Odden or Bernie Borges for their insights.
We started Scoop.it 5 years ago when digital content marketing was just getting started. Nobody has a crystal ball but we found some interesting trends by doing this survey and interviews:
- Technology will keep helping us work faster.
- But it might have an even greater impact by helping us work smarter.
- Automation is one aspect but to really empower result-driven strategies, intelligence is what smart marketers want to see being developed.
Doug Kessler makes a very good analysis of why numbers are so attractive in blog headlines and what it means to Content Marketers. It's something I also observed when analyzing the performance of our email marketing and our subject lines (details here: http://bit.ly/1c9HufY ).
In our own analysis, the correlation existed but not to the point where we stopped using anything else. Plus a number of our headlines that include numbers are actually not lists.
An interesting objection to this rule is Upworthy: it's hard to think of any site being less click-bait driven than this one. Yet, they don't use numbers or list given the format they're using but also probably because unlike Buzzfeed or b2b content marketers, they focus on being inspirational.
But for the latter who need to be educating their prospects, following the principles Doug Kessler outlines in this post is a great rule.
Many marketers balk at the prospect of creating content for industries that just aren't conducive to interesting topics. This post explains why that's short-sighted, and offers a different approach.
Via Guillaume Decugis
This is the third post I see on this topic over the past few weeks. New trend for 2015? I couldn't agree more that there is no such thing as boring industries when it comes to content marketing. Buyers having to make decisions will crave for genuinely educational content so it's all a matter of context.This post on Moz goes beyond making the argument to give actionable tips on how to make that happen starting by defining personas and thinking about their interest. Great read, especially if you thought there's nothing sexy in your industry you could publish about.
When it comes to guest blogging, there's bad guest blogging and good guest blogging.
Behind its good and provocative title (original title: "We're ignoring Google & it's working - here's why"), this article details why guest blogging is still a very valuable technique when done in a natural, respectful and meaningful way.
Ever since Google's Matt Cutts openly criticized guest blogging and announced that Google was making change to put an end to it, content marketers have been puzzled. My analysis is that the guest blogging Google targets as spammy is the one any somehow successful site receives offers of: the spammy, completely irrelevant guest blogging propositions from cheap copywriters who are employed by black hat, old styles SEOs to try to create backlink artificially. If you haven't come across these proposals, good for you! But if you do, you've probably turned them down anyway out of pure common sense.
Notwithstanding that, there is still great value at doing natural guest blogging to develop your visibility by leveraging other blog and media's audiences. There's a trade-off: you can't convert from sites you don't own but it's definitely worth exploring to bootstrap and develop your readership. And here's a great article from MarketingProfs on what to expect from it.
If you have been a digital or content marketer for some time, you know this problem only too well – there isn’t much free stuff when it comes to visuals or photographs for your precious content. And as you might be fully aware by now – you just can’t substitute having visuals with texts.
The lean content marketer's image sourcing problem is being slowly but surely. I've shared some other lists of similar websites before but I like this one which is curated and short.
The lean content marketer's image sourcing problem is being slowly but surely. I've shared some other lists of similar websites before but I like this one which is curated and short.
Barry Feldman comes back on the concept of content hubs which he developed in the ebook he wrote and that details why and how marketers should not manage their content properties in silos but focus them on their website.
As content marketing matures, you know why you need content marketing software. How much does content marketing software cost? We’ve done the research.
About a month ago, TopRank - the thought leading agency on content marketing - published their selection of top content marketing tools marketers should consider for their 2016 plan.
We elaborated on this to research the cost and scope of these tools to serve as a reference for the industry.
Here are 8 ways to get fired in 2016 as a content marketer. As a team of marketers ourselves, we've done each and every one of these mistakes ourselves in the past...
Time for content marketers to step up their game: while we all did these mistakes, I don't think the C-suite will have much patience for it going forward. Or at least they shouldn't given there are easy-enough solutions to implement such as content marketing software.
There’s a bit of confusion over SEO and content marketing. The confusion comes over how SEO and content marketing fit together. Do they fit together? Are they at odds with each other? If so, is it possible to force them together?
A Fresh content generates organic traffic and according to google strategies actually this is the only path to get the ranking for your websites as well as revenue through the Leeds.
SEO and content marketing have been at odds recently, with many blogs posting that content marketing has killed SEO. But this article argues that the two must go hand in hand in order for your social media to be successful. Content marketing actually improves the effectiveness of SEO, which may be where the confusion is coming from, but still, both are necessary to work.
This information is helpful for businesses trying to step up their social media marketing because it is important to realize, while SEO may get your name on the map, it is your content that really is key to making it successful. Your content will enhance the SEO of your company. For instance, the article states, “SEO demands keywords. Content marking means using keywords.” They simply cannot do without each other. In order to improve your content marking, you must use your keywords strategically throughout your content so that they can work fluently together.
In other words, if you focus solely on your SEO campaign, you will not succeed unless if you also employ content marketing, and vice versa. Too many people in social media positions call themselves SEO or content marketer. People will be more successful in their efforts if they blend the two together.
As Content Marketing matures, the ROI question becomes a burning one. Where is the ROI in content marketing? How do you achieve it? These are the slides of the…
Via Guillaume Decugis
If you missed our webinar with Buzzsumo on Content Marketing ROI, these are the slides of what we presented with Steve Rayson. You can also read a couple write ups on this topic on Buzzsumo's blog (http://buff.ly/20hArIN) and on our blog (http://sco.lt/9BiOQL).
Good Internet marketers know their SEO content strategy needs to be evaluated every so often in order to remain effective. Here's what to look at in 2015.
This is a guest post on our blog by Julia McCoy where she summarized the SEO content strategies that still worked these days. It's from a year ago but we've found that these are still working today and as we keep having the question, I felt it would be worth sharing further.
To add to her post and elaborate on the content creation part, you can also read our eBook on how to leverage content curation for SEO.
This is a guest post on our blog by Julia McCoy where she summarized the SEO content strategies that still worked these days. It's from a year ago but we've found that these are still working today and as we keep having the question, I felt it would be worth sharing further.
To add to her post and elaborate on the content creation part, you can also read our eBook on how to leverage content curation for SEO.
Creating impactful content is good but it's not enough. Learn how to maximize your content reach & leverage your organic distribution to its full potential.
50% of blog articles get less than 8 shares - aka nothing. And yet, only 34% of marketers re-share their content multiple times to give it the best organic promotion they can.
Why?
Because managing a backlog of content to re-share can be more complex than it sounds. And it's also easy to overdo it and provoke follower fatigue.
Well? Not anymore.
Here's how to fix that once and for all in a few minutes every day.
And also identify evergreen content to re-promote long after it's been published to extend its lifetime and increase engagement, traffic and leads.
50% of blog articles get less than 8 shares - aka nothing. And yet, only 34% of marketers re-share their content multiple times to give it the best organic promotion they can.
Why?
Because managing a backlog of content to re-share can be more complex than it sounds. And it's also easy to overdo it and provoke follower fatigue.
Well? Not anymore.
Here's how to fix that once and for all in a few minutes every day.
And also identify evergreen content to re-promote long after it's been published to extend its lifetime and increase engagement, traffic and leads.
Should you own your blog? Or aren't you better off leveraging an established audience like Facebook's, Medium's or the LinkedIn publishing platform?
We've covered this many times inluding in this post where Mark Shaefer, Michael Stelzner and Mitch Joel.
Joe Pulizzi gives a vibrant defense of owning your content house by comparing the appeal of the alternatives to the dark side: sure, it can be seen as faster for building traffic but then, he says, how come the valuation of Facebook seems to be directly correlated to the decline in organic reach of Facebook pages?
The above graph - put together by Jay Baer - is crystal clear: while it's tempting to fish where the fish is, social platforms that invested in building their audience are not here to let you capture it for free.
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Fantastic story of a black hat SEO link builder who became a millionaire working 10 hours a week before Google's algorithm changes destroyed his business and pushed him to embrace content marketing and inbound strategies.
A great story on the rise and fall of he old SEO.